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Concept Stage:
What's Important
and What Isn't: Don't be seduced by what you already understand.
By
Gerald Youngblood and David Mackie
Managing Partners, seedstage.com |
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As an entrepreneur,
you're going to have an entire vision in your head, you're going to be excited about
it, and you're going to find it's too abstract to sell because people can't get their
arms around it. So here are some ideas for a down-to-earth approach.
Why
It's Important
You are immediately in
danger of jeopardizing your chance for success when you're so passionate about your
idea and it's so clear to you, that you can't understand why other people don't understand.
Here's the reality: you must change your focus to the other person's point of view.
You need those investors and you're going to lose them if you don't.
How It
Works
Here are some of the more
common things to be aware of. Perhaps most important of all is your presentation
to investors. To make the point yet again: keep it short and stay away from argot,
which means the specialized vocabulary and idioms of those in the same work. You
probably encounter the word about as often as your audience encounters your jargon
and acronyms.
Don't be seduced by your idea. As the big guys put it: nothing happens until somebody
sells something. It's also critical that you decide which parts of your product are
the important parts and which are the critical ones. You don't give up the critical
items and you don't focus so hard on the important items. |
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| DO: |
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- Strike a balance
among your vision, your first step and getting someone to pay money for your product.
- Get a grip on delaying
your market entry because you're endlessly enhancing your product to improve its
chance for success - someone is going to pass you by and you won't have any chance
at all.
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| DON'T: |
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- Assume that simply
infecting other people with your excitement is going to lead to action on their part.
- Be afraid to ask
for the order.
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